No power cable for PEI?

Federal transport minister Chuck Strahl said Thursday the federal government won’t be helping the province fund an electricity line from the island to the mainland, saying that the project didn’t make the province’s own Top 20 priorities.

The provincial government is trying to secure funding for the project through a federal green infrastructure fund.

According to the Charlottetown Guardian:

Prince Edward Island isn’t the only province looking for an electrical cable.

The $1-billion green infrastructure program has already funded an electrical cable in British Columbia at a cost of $440 million. The federal government picked up $130 million. The program also funded a $160-million power cable in the Yukon. The federal government picked up $71 million.

Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia have a joint application for a cable between those two provinces. That mega-project will cost between $800 million and $1.2 billion. They’ve asked the federal government for $375 million.

Strahl said he recognizes the province wants to construct the cable and the federal government is working to find the money to fund the project.

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Ontario flush with electricity

And so much for that market for Lower Churchill power…

Ontario residents were bemused to discover that on New Year’s Day 2011, on average, they were paid to use electricity.

If that seemed unusual – and it is – it’s only the start.

Within the next two years, the conditions that produced the bonus New Year’s power could crop up about one day in every seven, according to an analysis by the agency that runs Ontario’s power market.

A big reason: about 5,000 megawatts of wind powered generation is due to be connected to the Ontario grid in the next few years, producing surges of power that are more than the province needs.

via Toronto Star

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Fisheries agreement delayed again

Did anyone really expect that fisheries minister Clyde Jackman would actually tell the people of the province officially, with a news release that the long-awaited fisheries restructuring agreement would be delayed yet again?

Good because he didn’t.

Instead, Jackman dropped a comment to the Northern Pen, a weekly paper on the province’s Northern Peninsula.

A draft copy of Newfoundland and Labrador’s fishing industry MOU has been sent back for fine tuning delaying its release by another “two or three months”.

Speaking to the Pen on Monday, fisheries minister Clyde Jackman confirmed that he had read the 100-page document but it required some tweaking.

And if the rest of Jackman’s comments are any indication there’s no wonder the fishery is in a mess.  The fish minister doesn’t even have a sweet clue about incomes in his own industry:

One thing that really stood out was the difference in incomes for the different parties,” he said.

“In some places you have plant workers earning $10,000 and supplemented by EI while in others, they make multi thousands of dollars.”

The smart-arses can ignore the fact that ten thousand is multi-thousands.  Just note that those sorts of figures can be found readily in a report on the crab industry contained in a report government received back when Trevor Taylor was the fisheries minister.

Meanwhile, the province’s official opposition party did manage to get the story some wider coverage than Jackman may have liked.  A news release the Liberals issued did get picked up by the major media in St. John’s, likely much to Jackman’s chagrin:

“What that really means is that the plan is dead for the next year,” said [fisheries critic Marshall] Dean. “By taking another two to three months to ‘fine tune’ it, Jackman is removing the MOU from any consideration of funding in the next provincial budget, which is expected in March. If there is no funding for the plan in the budget, nothing can happen with the plan until the following year’s budget in 2012. That’s a full six months after this coming fall’s provincial general election. It looks like Minister Jackman has finally found a way to ground the MOU until after the election.”

Given this government’s handling of the MOU – which has now taken four years and gone through three different fisheries ministers – Dean thinks there is no will on the part of the PCs to deal with the fishery at all.

The story also wound up on CBC’s Fisheries Broadcast.

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Related

-   Good to the last fish:

At the same time, there are still thousands of people in Newfoundland and Labrador trying to squeeze a very meagre living from processing fish for a few weeks a year and then collecting government hand-outs for the rest.  A report delivered to the current administration when it was still young pointed out that the typical fish plant worker made less than $10,000 a year from labour, picking up another $5,000 in employment insurance premiums.

There are still way too many of them – plants and plant workers – for them all to make a decent living from what fish, and now snails, there is to turn into frozen blocks. The only thing that has changed in the better part of a decade since that report is that the workers are finding it harder and harder to collect enough weeks of work to qualify for the EI.

-  Tom Rideout meets the Bride of Frankenstein

-  Up the creek with Jackman and Rideout

New gas find offshore Israel

Funny the things that slip by.

Over Christmas the Globe and Mail ran a story on new oil and natural gas finds in Israel.  The twenty trillion cubic feet of natural gas in one set of offshore finds will reshape the Middle East and more energy finds could reshape global energy supplies.

Estimated to contain 16 trillion cubic feet of gas – equivalent to more than a quarter of Canada’s proven reserves and enough to meet Israel’s domestic demand for 100 years – the Leviathan field is believed to be the largest such deep-water gas discovery in a decade.

The find actually dates from  June 2010 as a story in the Jerusalem Post shows.

In January 2009, the discovery of the natural-gas field 90 kilometers offshore from Haifa, known as Tamar, in which Noble Energy has a 36% working interest, was made by the US-Israel consortium including the Delek Group, through its subsidiaries Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration, Isramco Negev 2, Dor Gas Exploration. Tamar is the largest exploration discovery in Noble Energy’s history, which last year also discovered a natural-gas field at Dalit with gas reserves estimated at 500 billion cubic feet.

“The Leviathan exploration has the potential of being twice the size of Tamar, which was the largest gas discovery globally in 2009,” Richard Gussow, a research analyst at Deutsche Bank, said Thursday.

In addition, there’s been a major oil discovery onshore as well of a field roughly the size of Hibernia with additional prospects offshore.

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AbitibiBowater properties up for sale

An advertisement appearing in the Telegram on Wednesday put the Stephenville and Botwood properties still owned by AbitibiBowater up for sale.

The receivers are inviting bids for six parcels, four of them associated with the former Stephenville mill and two for land, buildings and a deep-water dock facility at Botwood.

The ad was placed by Samson Belair/Deloitte and Touche, receivers for a numbered Newfoundland and Labrador company created during the recent restructuring of AbitibiBowater.

Any environmental liabilities would pass to the new owners with any sale of the properties in the same way that provincial taxpayers are now liable for the entire Grand Falls mistakenly expropriated in 2008 by the Williams administration.

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Non-res building up 23.% in Q4

The value of non-residential construction in Newfoundland and Labrador increased 23.6% in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to the third quarter, according to figures released Monday by Statistics Canada.

Of the $103 million in industrial, commercial and institutional construction in the province, $62 million of it was in the metro St. John’s region.

That’s interesting given a recent comment by finance minister Tom Marshall that it was time for the private sector to step in a drive the economy for a while. BMO noted recently that provincial economic growth is driven currently by capital spending. 

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Tory angst might be well founded

Conservatives across Newfoundland and Labrador seem to be in a bit of a tizzy. Danny Williams’ sudden departure has the caucus so spooked they are trying to engineer a backroom deal to avoid a leadership contest.

On some level you have to wonder why they might be so uptight.  After all, to casual observers they would appear to be guaranteed an easy victory in October’s general election with or without the Old Man.

But then you see things like an online poll at The Western Star:  “If you were a Danny Williams supporter, are you less likely to vote PC now?”

So far, 46% of respondents are saying yes, they are less likely to vote Tory. 15% say they are more likely to vote PC and the remainder  - 39% – answered “no”.

Even in the government’s own polls, Danny always ran way ahead of the party.  In the most recent government poll, though, support for the party dropped about 10 percentage points compared to a poll done three months earlier. That wasn’t good even when people thought Danny would still be around for the fall election.

Now that he’s gone, things will likely turn out very differently.  People who barely won their seats at the peak of supposed Danny-mania in 2007 might not have such an easy time of it in 2011.  They might need a boost, like say from a cabinet appointment, to try and counteract the loss of Danny Williams’ entire coat.

Stop and think about it for a second, though, and the long term trend of Danny running in front of his party’s support and the Western Star online poll are pointing in the same direction.  It would make sense that people who had voted Conservative in the recent past would now be thinking about shifting their vote.  They were Danny Tories, as it were, not committed Tories.

All that would lead explain why Conservatives in the province are a wee bit out of sorts these days. 

And if the number of soft Tory votes is actually close to the 46% the Star found, then politics over the next eight or 10 months is going to be way more interesting than anyone suspects right now.

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Layton renews call for Conservative-style tax cuts

On a visit to St. John’s Monday, federal New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton renewed his call to cut taxes from home heating:

Layton called for the federal government to cut taxes to home heating in this year’s budget, and he called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to extend a program to provide subsidies to people who make their homes more energy efficient.

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The King’s Speech

Via the BBC, a short article on King George VI and his speech impediment.

The article includes the complete audio of the King’s speech in September 1939 that forms the climax of the recent movie.

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Rick Hillier? Tim Powers? No thanks, say NL Tories

Whatever is going on in Newfoundland and Labrador these days certainly is politics but it most certainly is not democracy.

What is dizzying, to borrow Tim Powers’ word, is the pace at which the province’s Conservatives are trying to keep a back-room political plot hatched over Christmas from exploding into a catastrophe as large as Danny Williams’ polling numbers.

“Everyone should have a right to put their name on a ballot assuming they adhere to the rules,” write Tim Powers in the Globe and Mail last week.  That is certainly true but it assumes that the rules are clearly known or, to be more accurate faithfully applied by the “officials” who, after exampling Brad Cabana’s nomination documents, “decided they didn't fit the criteria set out by the party.”

Perhaps the most useful way to look at this political farce is to use not Brad Cabana as our test subject but no less a person than Tim Powers. 

You see, when Danny Williams took to his heels and fed the Confederation Building, Tim’s was one of the first names some people offered up as a potential replacement.

Some other contenders, like finance minister Tom Marshall and then-education minister Darin King said they would take the time over Christmas to talk with friends and family.  They’d come back after Christmas end let the world know what they’d decided.

By Friday, December 24, though, that had changed.  Marshall, King and presumed heir-apparent Jerome Kennedy held news conferences to say that they’d be backing Kathy Dunderdale instead. Dunderdale, you may recall, was supposed to be the interim leader and had indicated she had no interest in the job. 

Off went everyone to Christmas holidays.

Another minister dropped out and by December 30, Dunderdale wanted the job. Virtually the entire caucus, she said, backed her.

Curiously that was the same day the party announced it would accept nominations for leader until January 10. 

Now if either Tim or Rick Hiller – living in Ottawa, were still pondering their future, they certainly wouldn’t have had much time to get their papers in order.  By the time the party announced that it would accept nominations, the race was effectively over. That’s exactly the point that cabinet minister Ross Wiseman and his executive assistant made to Cabana on January 5.  Since the entire caucus and their district associations backed Dunderdale, the odds of winning were very slim.

Besides, wrote Chick Cholock, Wiseman’s executive assistant, a contested leadership would put at risk Danny Williams’ legacy. “We do not want a Party [sic] divided now that Danny has moved on,” wrote Cholock in an e-mail.”

None of the arguments Wiseman and other Conservatives have offered about Brad Cabana had anything to do with following rules or his quality has a candidate. 

They had everything to do with an apparent desire within the caucus to avoid a contested leadership fight of any kind.  In other words had Tim or Rick decided to go all-in  now that the caucus made a decision, they would almost surely have been met with exactly the same arguments that faced Cabana:

1. They wouldn’t stand a chance since all the people now determined to be party members had already decided, and
2. a leadership contest in itself created the risk of fracturing the party beyond repair.

The Conservatives could lose the October election, as Cholock suggested in an e-mail he sent Cabana before nominations closed on January 10.

Wiseman and others did slide in another interesting qualification that doesn’t appear anywhere in the Conservative Party constitution.  Cabana hadn’t lived in the province very long, Wiseman noted in a scrum he gave after Cabana revealed Cholock had visited him on January 5 to try and discourage him from running. Nor had Cabana been very active in party functions, apparently.  There are two other grounds by which both Tim Powers and Rick Hillier would be disqualified.

If you are tired of the tedium that is federal politics, there is a drama unfolding in Newfoundland and Labrador.  But  the party that Danny Williams built is hell bent on showing that what they are up to is about as far from democracy as Parliament Hill is from excitement.

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Overture: “William Tell”

Sadly, split into two bits:

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Overture from “The Barber of Seville”

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Political blarney stone gone

Danny Williams’ political backside used to be like a blarney stone on legs.

Any politician of any stripe loved to kiss Danny’s hind bits in hopes some of Williams’ magic would rub off.  

The latest sign Danny’s butt is out of visible power comes from Jack Layton.  The federal New Democrat leader now claims he can get a better indication of what is going on in the province by meeting with ordinary people.

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Iceland opportunity lost

Danny Williams’ obsession with signing something he could have called a Lower Churchill deal before he quit politics ignored a far better opportunity for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

According to documents released by Wikileaks, the Icelandic government sought American financial assistance in 2008 to deal with its crushing foreign debt situation. The government was looking for a loan of $1.0 billion with “medium term maturity”.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government had twice that much in cash at the time as the result of gigantic oil price windfalls.  It also had the capacity to borrow billions more if needed. The Icelandic loan would have guaranteed payoff from the interest rate charged.  An Icelandic bailout might also have given the provincial government influence in Iceland and the country’s energy and fishing industries.

Instead, the Williams administration pursued his obsessive desire to develop something on the Lower Churchill river that would enable him to retire from politics.

Under Williams’ retirement plan,  the taxpayers of Newfoundland and Labrador will have to borrow almost three times the size of the Icelandic bailout and face guaranteed doubling of current electricity rates to finance a dam on the Churchill River and expensive transmission lines.

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Connie Leadership 2011: Party delays appeal hearing

According to the Telegram, the provincial Conservative Party is postponing the appeal into it’s decision on Brad Cabana’s leadership bid.

The party is postponing the hearing date from January 21 to January 24 to accommodate one member of the hearing panel who has a scheduling conflict.

The party rejected Cabana’s leadership nomination claiming that he did not have enough signatures of people the party recognises as members.  Cabana and the party both contend that the party has an open membership process.  The party contends that open membership doesn’t mean it is actually open.

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HQ signs new power deal with Vermont

Starting next year, Hydro-Quebec will ship power to Vermont under a new 26 year power purchase agreement, according to the Montreal Gazette.

The starting price for the power is US$58.07 per megawatt hour.

By contrast, and if it goes ahead, the recently announce Muskrat Falls project in Labrador will produce power in 2017 for about $143 per megawatt hour according to Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale.*

Under the new agreement, Vermont utilities will purchase up to 225 megawatts of energy, starting in November 2012 and ending in 2038.

The agreement includes a price-smoothing mechanism that will help shield Vermont customers from volatile market prices, the utilities said.

Under the proposed 824 megawatt Muskrat Falls project, the only confirmed customers are Newfoundland and Labrador  - where the power isn’t needed – and Nova Scotia where Emera will receive 35 terawatt years of power in exchange for building a $1.2 billion intertie between Newfoundland and Cape Breton.

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*Edited to clarify the reference to Muskrat Falls

Connie Leadership 2011: Spooky stuff

In the middle of the 1990s, some guy  - a “prominent young St. John’s lawyer” apparently thought the Tories should have a leadership contest because the caucus was behind Len Simms:

His reasoning: Simms will win anyway so endorsing a competitive political race would be a waste of PC party funds. It came down to money for him.

Now there’s an unfailing testimony to the sterile decline in respect for the value of democracy in the PC party of Newfoundland.

That prominent St. John’s lawyer? You guessed it — Danny Williams [via The Telegram letters page last week]

As Premier, Danny Williams gave Len Simms a plum patronage job heading the province’s housing corporation.

Hmmm.

Makes you wonder now about all the Danny sightings in and around the Confed Building the past couple of weeks and the rumours that he helped broker the back-room deal to keep Kathy Dunderdale in place.

Whatever is going on in those Conservative back-rooms and the front seat of an Escalade, it sure as heck ain’t about democracy.

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Dunderball - Traffic for Jan 10-14, 2010

Who would have thought a mere two months ago that the ruling Conservatives could be embroiled in a political clusterfrack entirely of their own making?

Who would have thought that Danny Williams would be parking in the Confed Building parking lot with Kathy Dunderdale the day before a surprise cabinet shuffle?

Well, all of that has gone to making this another big week for Bond papers traffic.  Not surprisingly, all but one of this week’s top 10 posts are all about the bizarre psychodrama that is the province’s Conservatives.

The other one is an op-ed from Kelvin Parsons that the conventionals carried and the Liberals sent along here as well. Any of the other parties who want to do the same thing are welcome to send their submissions along as well for consideration.

1. Brad and Circuses
2. Is anyone surprised?
3. Logically Challenged Conservatives
4. Cabana candidacy causes Connie caucus consternation
5. Dunderball Run!
6. The persistence of patronage politics
7. The caucus’ worst nightmare
8. Kremlinology 29:  Easybake Tories
9. Cabinet Shuffle Bored
10. A sweet energy deal for someone

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Money for nothing

A change in lyrics, if ya notice…

No Muskrat Falls in BMO forecast

Curiously, BMO’s latest economic forecast for the province doesn’t include any reference to Muskrat Falls.

The bank’s economists forecast overall economic growth in the province of 3.,9% in 2011 driven by provincial government infrastructure spending totalling $5.0 billion “over the next several years.  BMO says that the province’s capital spending hit 3% of the province’s gross domestic product in 2010.

BMO forecasts continued strong capital spending over the next three years.  While the bank mentions Hebron, Hibernia South and Long Harbour, there’s no reference to Muskrat Falls. That stands out like the proverbial sore thumb since the forecast is up-to-date enough to note the change in Conservative leadership late last year. it’s also odd because the forecast of capital spending comes entirely from the provincial government’s figures.

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Related:  Labour force indicators raise questions about economic health and competitiveness